“I’ve used all these different devices — they suck.”
Short. Sweet. To the point. Rarely do you find that at tech conferences. Luckily, Chamillionaire loves coming to ours.
That was the hip-hop star’s words to Android design lead Matias Duarte during our Mobile First CrunchUp today. During the closing panel, Chamillionaire got up to express his love for the iPhone and his frustration that Android has not been able to create even one device that can match it. → Read More
just.me, a stealth startup playing in the social and mobile spaces, has just raised $600,000 in seed funding from a list of all star investors including Google Ventures, True Ventures, SV Angel, Betaworks, Don Dodge, Patrick Gannon, Michael Parekh, Steve McArthur, and Four Horsemen LLC.
just.me was founded by Keith Teare, a serial entrepreneur and a co-founder of TechCrunch. Teare previously co-founded RealNames Corporation, and The EasyNet Group. → Read More
Kleiner Perkins VC Chi-Hua Chien kicked off the “Money Matters” panel at the TechCrunch Mobile First CrunchUp with a telling understatement, “There seems to be a lot of new business models around mobile.” Indeed, what makes mobile unique as a communication platform is that traditional advertising isn’t the default. See: Kiip.
As Chien pointed out, because of constraints on-screen size, display ads won’t cut it when your screen is 3 inches wide. As constraints often necessitate creative solutions, we’re seeing a shift on mobile that has resulted in many businesses trying a multitude solutions for monetizing mobile transactions, specifically commerce and deals or offers. → Read More
Next Jump, which powers rewards programs for thousands of corporations and credit card companies, has been steadily expanding its platform to offer a more social experience for consumers. For example, the startup inked a deal with LivingSocial to get access to its inventory of daily deals, and allows users to use Next Jump’s WOWpoints to buy deals and merchandise from retailers like Target and Walmart. Today, Next Jump is unveiling another piece of the puzzle with the debut of Ella, an iOS app that allows you to earn and reward WOWpoints for sharing fashion and shopping tips with your friends. → Read More
What would Craigslist look like if it was a mobile app? It might look a little bit like Blockboard, a neighborhood app which is expanding today from its initial neighborhood of the Mission in San Francisco to the rest of the city. Co-founder Stephen Hood demoed the app at our Mobile First CrunchUp today.
It is designed from the ground-up as a neighborhood app through which neighbors can interact with one another. They can report potholes and graffiti directly to the city, alert each other about crime and vandalism through a Blockwatch, post general observations about the neighborhood, ask their neighbors questions, and post pictures of lost and found items. → Read More
Ten startups were showcased to investors at the brand new Springboard accelerator programme in the UK today, which has joined Seedcamp, Startup Bootcamp and Hackfwd as one of the bigger programmes across Europe.
The startups to present were the following, (click the links to get our coverage of each company):
Adwings, Arachnys, Apiary, HubFlow, Mayday, MiniMonos, Playmob, Publification, Tastebuds.fm, and TotalGigs. → Read More
Perhaps one of the most interesting new startups to emerge from the Springboard accelerator programme at its first investor day today has been Publification.
Right now there is a problem with ebooks. They are files. They are not dynamic. You need a reader. Not all readers work with all files. Plus, publishers are in hoc to the platforms like Kindle and iBooks. It’s a total pain, for publishers and for writers. Publishers don’t have any control over what is promoted and don’t get enough data about the customers. The companies that win are the platforms, Amazon and Apple and the rest.
Publification disrupts that model by creating an ebook reader for browsers, creating a beautiful reading experience through an HTML5 app inside a browser. That means it can access 2 billion existing devices. The HTML5 based Browserbook reader automatically fits any screen size and having seen it myself I can say it actually works extremely well, including swiping on an iPad. No files to download, no software to install, no dedicated e-reader devices. → Read More
Today during our Mobile First CrunchUp in Palo Alto, CA, our own Jason Kincaid led a panel focused on designing the mobile experience. On the panel were Bump’s Jake Mintz, Soundtracking’s Steve Jang, and Google’s Matias Duarte (the Director of User Experience for Android). Not surprisingly, much of the talk was iOS versus Android. Such is the state of the mobile world right now.
It was a good panel for such a talk because Soundtracking is iPhone-only right now, Bump is out there for both iPhone and Android, and Duarte is obviously an Android guy. Jason came right out with it. “Why are iPhone applications better looking than Android applications?” → Read More
At today’s Mobile First CrunchUp, Erick Schonfeld sat down with AdMob and Churn Labs founder Omar Hamoui, and Instagram founder Kevin Systrom to discuss how both founders approached mobile development vs. the web.
Systrom, whose popular iOS photo sharing app just passed 7 million users, explained that the biggest opportunities for Instagram are on mobile, not the web. “I don’t believe Instagram could have been a website and website only,” Systrom explains. “The nature of the app is about sharing photographs in the moment.” And the mobile phone is the optimal platform for this task. → Read More
Here at the TechCrunch Mobile First Crunchup storied mobile developer Joe Hewitt spoke about the future of native and mobile Web apps with TC writer MG Siegler. Hewitt is most famously the Facebook mobile developer that stopped doing work on Facebook’s iOS efforts after he got fed up with Apple’s staunch App Store rules.
Hewitt seemed softer with regards to Apple at today’s talk, even telling Siegler that he was an iPhone man, “I never said I didn’t love the product,” he said.
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Springboard Startups: A “Color for live music” might be stretching the analogy (and the comparison) but Total Gigs wants to be in the same location-based content sharing field, even if it probably wouldn’t like Color’s negative press.
They intend to launch an app on the iPhone, RIM and Android to allow sharing of Pictures, Messages and “Moods” based on location. Then, when the event finishes, the stream closes but users can go back and relive the memory through shared pictures, thoughts and emotions that were captured at the time. → Read More
Good news! If you’re missing a little iLife in your life than have no fear, Apple’s got it figured out for you. iLife has been included on the new MacBook Air and Mac mini, in the form of GarageBand, iPhoto, and iMovie.
As luck, and Apple, would have it, once you have a licensed copy of iLife ‘11 (like the one that comes with your new Mac) attached to your Mac App Store user account, it’s available for download on other Macs also linked to that account. → Read More
With the demise of the space shuttle program fresh in my mind, I’m forced to find my space-related solace wherever I can. Luckily, with companies like SpaceX still devoted to removing the obstacles to commercial space flight, I can’t be too bummed — and as Reuters has reported, SpaceX is preparing their next step. After their literal show of force a few months back, SpaceX is aim their sights just a little higher. → Read More
‘Google Friends’ a charming thirteen year old newsletter that a few old-time techies still subscribe too has decided to shut down today, citing flat subscription numbers and the prominence of Twitter and the official Google blog as impetus for its retirement. Started by co-founder and current CEO Larry Page on April 29, 1998, the newsletter started while Google was on the Stanford servers and provided fans with incremental Google updates like ” I created a new logo using Gimp (of course).” Seriously, run through the archives, its awesome.
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Springboard Startups: In a sentence, MiniMonos is a ‘Green Moshi Monsters for boys.”
The longer story is that this is a 2D virtual world for kids to have fun in (it’s focused on entertainment with green/sustainability themes, not education). MiniMonos has been going for two years and is led by an experienced team led by of CEO Melissa Clark-Reynolds, but only came out of beta last month. It’s growing at 20% per month and now has about 300,000 registered members. Revenue comes through subscriptions and microtransactions. The target market is 8-12-year-old boys.
Buy a virtual good inside the game and you contribute to a clean water supply for kids in India (14,000+ days to date), as well as adopting orangutans, supporting wild tigers, and other feel-good rewards. There are also in-world rewards for real-world eco-actions. → Read More
What do you get if you cross an ex-Control Risks analyst with a technical co-founder? Remember, Control Risks is about entering and dealing with emerging new markets, where anything can happen. So Arachnys is about digging deep into the data about business information from emerging markets like India, China, and Russia. Think Google for emerging markets. → Read More
Tastebuds.fm has been making waves recently with an innovative approach to dating which is a lot less run of the mill. Today it launches to investors at the Springboard accelerator programme in Cambridge, with a bid for £500,000 of Seed investment.
Users import their music profiles from last.fm, facebook or just put in some of their favourite artists. They are then shown single people who share their musical preferences. A lot less tiresome than trawling though people who might look good but are not as keen on the Smashing Pumpkins as you – and a lot more emotionally connecting.
Tastebuds is also integrated with music events website Songkick. Thus, an event Matchmaker lets you declare your intention to go to a gig and ask if anyone wants to come – a perfect dating feature. → Read More
Springboard Startups: Web APIs are critical piece of cloud infrastructure —enabling businesses to monetise their data, provide services to 3rd parties, power mobile applications and migrate enterprise to cloud. The trouble is, building successful cloud APIs is not easy. It’s not just the API. You also need to create documentation and attract developers. That is a major pain in the ass.
So, Apiary.io is a developer friendly API blueprint, a way to describe your API. Clients get testing infrastructure, and the documentation is generated automatically from the blueprint and testing infrastructure. So the documentation is always up to date. Woot. → Read More
Couldn’t buy tickets in time or just too far away from Palo Alto? You can stay on top of all the Mobile First Crunchup action with the livestream here (starts at 1 p.m.) and our blog posts throughout the event. Full agenda after the jump.
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15 years ago, Apple was on the verge of default. Today, the United States government is. Let’s hope that in 15 years, our government will have been able to turn it around the way Apple has.
As is being reported by just about everyone, following their massive third quarter, Apple now has more cash (and cash equivalents) on hand than the U.S. government has for its entire operating balance. Apple has $75.876 billion. The U.S. government has $73.768 billion. Wow. → Read More
